


Adrift

by EllenofX



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Episode: s02e20 Weirdmageddon 3: Take Back the Falls, Gen, Memory Loss, The Final - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-24 20:16:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9784538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllenofX/pseuds/EllenofX
Summary: Looking like Lethe, see! the lakeA conscious slumber seems to take,And would not, for the world, awake.-The Sleeper, Edgar Allen Poe





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the first GF anniversary.

> _Looking like Lethe, see! the lake_  
>  A conscious slumber seems to take,  
>  And would not, for the world, awake.  
>  - _The Sleeper, by Edgar Allen Poe_  
> 

When the sleeper awoke, he felt himself entirely at peace. The world was still and calm, the gentle song of birds sounding in the distance. There was no reason to move or struggle, and so the sleeper didn't.

It wasn't until a cool breeze brushed through his hair that the sleeper finally, slowly, lowered his head, contemplating the ground as one might contemplate a dream. The grass was green, overgrown and dappled in sunlight, and the sleeper considered letting himself fall into it. In a daze, time passed, the sleeper still drifting calmly in his existence.

And then a voice came, shattering the illusion of timelessness, and drowning the sleeper in harsh reality.

"Oh my gosh! Grunkle Stan! You did it!"

The sleeper didn't start exactly, but a charge did go through him. Words - people! Concepts he found himself entirely excepting of, yet couldn't quite place in him small clearing of existence. The woods surrounded him, and he didn't recall ever leaving or wanting to push through them to anything else. So how did he know these things? And, more importantly... _Grunkle... Stan?_

"Oh, uh... Hey there, kiddo..." The sleeper said when a girl made of color and enthusiasm ran to him, gently placing a fez atop his head. "What's your name?"

"Grunkle Stan?" She replied, her face falling from joy to sorrow as if her world had just shattered, and for whatever reason, the sleeper found his had too.

"Heh," The sleeper said, to hide his growing nervousness. Something was deeply, desperately wrong, though he cling to what shattered remnants of tranquility he had, as though through pure willpower he could refuse them. However, like glass they only cut. He found himself yearning for the quite time that was but only a minute ago, and yet somehow to try to keep it was _wrong_. 

"Who you talking to?" he asked.

"Come on," The girl replied, "It's me Grunkle Stan. Grunkle Stan! It's me!"

As her voice grew higher in pitch, more desperate, one of her companions, a boy, stepped forward to take her. 

"We had to erase his mind to defeat Bill," said the third and final member of their small group. A man who, the sleeper thought with no real reasoning behind it, dressed smart. Like the devil himself. "It's all gone."

"Stan has no idea, but he saved the world. He saved me." The man continued, sinking down before the sleeper, and clapping a hand upon his shoulder, "You're our hero, Stanley."

And then arms wrapped around the sleeper in a tight, too tight, embrace. The sleeper's panic quelled a little, finding something just as right and calm in the man's arms as he did in the breeze and birdsong before. There was still no reason to move, no reason to fight, but now the sleeper felt the need to struggle within the confines of his own mind.

The sleeper wasn't stupid, and while he had no idea what was going on, he now knew that _he_ was Stanley. Maybe, maybe he could fix this if he could just remember, because he hated how these people cried.


End file.
